ust before dawn one July morning, Kathryn Bigelow was setting up a shot for The Hurt Locker in the Jordanian desert. The movie follows an Explosive Ordnance Disposal bomb technician, one of the hundred or so soldiers in Iraq who dismantle roadside IEDs planted by insurgents. For the scene, the tech and two of his co--workers would detonate a bomb in the middle of the desert, and Bigelow wanted to shoot them from atop a high sand dune. This meant that the crew had to tote all their gear to the top of a hill in the brutal summer heat. "There were a lot of macho guys on the set, British SAS, not to mention all these young, studly actors, and all those guys were falling by the wayside," says Mark Boal, who wrote and co-produced The Hurt Locker. "I'm not walking this hill, no way in hell. I drive past one of the crew who's literally puking on the side of the road. People are dying on this hill. I drive up, and Kathryn is already at the top. She's beaten everyone up there." (Story continued below...)
Bigelow—who, at 57, has the regal beauty and presence of a Hepburn—laughs off the story when Boal tells it over dinner in Los Angeles. As we eat, Boal does most of the talking, while Bigelow worries about noise from another table and making sure everyone likes their food. The director, who is probably best known for 1991's surf/heist film Point Break or 1995's futuristic action film Strange Days, says she prefers observing to participating—when she auditions actors, she watches them talking to someone else—and her gracious but reserved manner makes it hard to imagine her commanding a crew of sweaty faux soldiers in the desert heat. "You have a salad with her, she's very well spoken, but she's pretty soft," says Jeremy Renner, who plays a maverick bomb tech in the film. "In social situations she can be painfully shy."
Read Full Article »
